TechnologyEast Asia
Rice domesticated on the Yangtze
The grain that now feeds half of humanity
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Wild rice sheds its seeds as they ripen — that is how the plant spreads. Farmers selected, unknowingly and over a thousand years, for plants that *held* their seeds, because only those came home with them. The result is a plant that can no longer reproduce without humans. To the north, on the Yellow River, the same happened independently with millet.
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Along the great Yangtze river in China, people began sowing rice in flooded ground. Rice yields more food per field than almost anything else, but demands great labour and water. That is why East Asia has been so densely populated ever since.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org